All posts tagged ‘game-based learning’

I heard his voice as Trooper 4 while playing Halo: Reach. I’ve seen him as the charismatic host of Spike TV’s Video Game Awards in 2011. And my son and I are both huge fans of his tech-savvy super-agent character Chuck Bartowski from the former NBC series Chuck. But I quickly learned that Zachary Levi’s many passions and keen intellect don’t stop at doing voiceovers for video games, hosting awards shows and acting in prime time television series. Now he’s added a National STEM Video Game Challenge judgeship to his list of accomplishments. And that’s just the beginning. For Zachary Levi, the integration of gaming-based literacies and future-tech in education can’t happen soon enough. We need a brave new world of universal STEM skills, digital literacies and human-centric technology in classrooms and living rooms now.

I spent close to an hour chatting with Zachary Levi about the National STEM Video Game Challenge, video games, his views on technology and his thoughts on digital literacies and what making video games does for teaching skills to kids. Levi is helping to drive the vanguard of a quaking paradigm shift in seeking to change the way children (and adults, of course) not just acquire and learn information but change their motivation behind seeking new knowledge of themselves and of their place in our connected world. Continue Reading “Zachary Levi Talks STEM Skills, Digital Literacies and Human-Centric Tech” »

My GeekDad colleague James Floyd Kelly and I teamed up to do our investigative report on Ben Bertoli, who teaches sixth grade math, science and language arts in Indianapolis, Indiana. Ben’s launching ClassRealm, his project to gamify education through a customizable classroom management system built on role playing themes. Here is Bertoli’s official Kickstarter description:

In simplest terms ClassRealm is a customizable web-based tool that can be used by teachers, students and parents to track student achievements, provide students with entertaining and educational adventures, as well as improve their overall academic performance.

The site has been up for 2.5 to 3 months but will be launching publicly soon. There is a companion Kickstarter project that launched Friday, May 4, to raise funds for this worthwhile educational project.

Teachers can use ClassRealm to set up specific goals and achievements for individual students or entire classes, as well as to track student data and progress. Students can earn achievements and XP by completing tests, helping other classmates, and reading extra books for class. Parents can follow their child’s many adventures online and create personalized side quests.

Over at Motion Math Games, a developer GeekDad has long admired for bringing math to kinesthetic learners, they have put their app where more apps should be – under the researcher’s microscope. They invested their own funds and partnered with the GameDesk Institute to have a look at the real educational value of the iPad and their app and whether it indeed supports and improves children’s ability to learn math, specifically fractions, which their Motion Math app is based on.

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence about the value of the iPad, many would say so overwhelming that the significant investment being made by School Districts into mobile technologies and tablets isn’t worthwhile. But, without any decent research or proven randomized trials to demonstrate the educational effectiveness, anyone making claims about the huge educational benefits of certain technologies, apps or other new product is not doing it based on any rigor or serious testing. So, it is heartening to see at least this developer recognizing the importance of putting their money behind some work to try to establish whether there is educational value behind not just what they are doing, but what we are all doing as our children move into a world of mobile technologies.

The value of such research is not really in the final percentage breakdowns listing the achievements of children and whether they have benefited or not from using an app or a piece of mobile technology. The real value is understanding the nuances and grappling with questions that app developers in this space should be tackling like:

What aspects of the design contribute to improved learning?

How do children engage with the tools as learning devices and what can we learn from this in improving our development?

Is it the app itself that supports learning, or the nature of the device, or a combination – and what is that combination and how can we better use it to improve learning?